Teachers must sign up for drama and sport, say MPs

Richard Garner

Richard Garner has been Education Editor of The Independent for 12 years and writing about the subject for 34 years. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a disc jockey in London pubs and clubs and for a hospital radio station. His main hobbies are cricket (watching these days) and theatre. On his days off, he is most likelt to be found at Lord’s or the King’s Head Theatre Club.

Teachers should be obliged to take part in extracurricular activities such as sport and drama, according to an influential MPs’ report out today.

Participation should be included as a formal aspect of a
teacher’s contract of employment, says a report from the All Party
Parliamentary Group on social mobility.

It embraces the idea that schools should be more than just
“exam factories” and place greater emphasis on building their pupils’ character
and resilience - as pledged by Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Tristram
Hunt in an interview with The Independent yesterday.

It was won widespread backing from across the party political
spectrum as well as from the Confederation for British Industry and the
Government’s social mobility tsar, former Labour Cabinet Minister Alan Milburn
who said: “Schools must do more to promote character skills as well as academic
attainment. It is not a question of either/or. The core business of
a school must be to do both.

The report talks of the importance of participation in extra
curricula activities and calls for every pupil to be presented with a school
leaver certificate listing all their achievements - not just exam success.

It argues: “We believe Britain needs a ‘national conversation’
about the role that developing character and resilience can play in narrowing
the unacceptably wide gap in life chances between children from different
backgrounds.”

One of the best ways of ensuring more children take advantage
of extra-curricular activities, it says, would be “by making a requirement to
participate in extra-curricular activities a formal aspect of teacher’s
contract of employment”.

However, it adds: “This cannot simply be a mechanism for
asking teachers to work longer hours without reward. This additional
responsibility would either need to be met by a corresponding reward/incentive
or by schools allowing more time for these activities with the regular school
day.

The recommendation comes as Education Secretary Michael Gove is
asking all schools to consider staying open for up to 10 hours a day to enable
pupils to do their homework at school, take part in debating societies or
inter-school games.

In a speech last week, Mr Gove said: “As top heads and
teachers already know, sports clubs, orchestras and choirs, school plays,
cadets, debating competitions all help to build character and instil grit, to
give children’s talents an opportunity to grow and to allow them to discover
new talents they never know they had.”

Union leaders warned that teachers’ workloads were “already
immense”.

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of
Teachers, said: “Extra-curricular activities are certainly a way of ensuring all
pupils have the same access to a range of activities and interests.

“This is something which, as the report recommends, cannot be
achieved by asking teachers to work longer. Time is finite, as are school budgets. Teachers cannot be expected to do
more.”